


The Uses of Gratitude

by orphan_account



Series: Uses [3]
Category: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
Genre: Dom!Richard, Light BDSM, Light Dom/sub, M/M, re-establishing a relationship, sub!peter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-25
Updated: 2013-01-25
Packaged: 2017-11-26 20:29:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/654120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>George Smiley forced them back together, which was the best for all of them. Richard still has painful memories of the night Peter asked him to leave, and Peter still has a guilty heart, but at the end of the day they are happy to be together again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Uses of Gratitude

**Author's Note:**

> This may or may not be the final installment in the Uses series, we'll see. There is a part where my beta got a bit fuzzy on the timeline, but anything referencing their breakup is just flashback-ish. There's a mini one at the beginning, a bigger one later, and then yeah. 
> 
> ~Sil

Peter seemed to be hellbent on ‘proving himself’ or some other nonsense. He took every word to the letter, and it was more sad than hilarious. His Peter, with his beautiful golden hair and gawky face, felt so _badly_ for lying to him—or at least for Richard having _found out_ about the lying the way he had. This meant, though, that every _can you help with the bags_ turned out to be far too open-ended—Peter had halfway unloaded the car Richard’s sister Angela had loaned him before he caught him. _Help me with this bag_ wasn’t any good either—Peter was lost, as though he didn’t know if he should wait in the flat, go out and help, or anything once _that_ bag was helped with. It was as though they were going through the growing pains of their relationship all over again, back when they were both on shaky ground with trust and intimacy.

He’d told the neighbors—who probably didn’t believe a word of it—that the business with family he’d gone away for had been taken care of and he was back in London for his job at the school. He didn’t like to lie, but it was better than forcing the two of them to move to a new flat entirely. He and the neighbors would just as soon continue to pretend that he and Peter were merely good friends turned flatmates. Live and let live is what Angela had said when he’d told her all those years ago—don’t tell them you’re queer and they won’t beat you up, she’d said huffily.

Entirely conceal your desire to love and be loved because of _who_ you’ll end up loving is what that meant in the end. There wasn’t much of a choice, not for men their age at least.

Perhaps the layers of required concealment in Peter’s life was why the other man hadn’t ever agonized about concealing their relationship, even though Richard knew he’d done his own fair share of agonizing and ranting. Peter had had to live every day hiding not only his affection for Richard but his job as well—no one could know about either, which meant that the Peter Guillam who went to the shops by himself was much more of a nobody than anyone around him. The tales he told of his job were just as fictional as the ones he told of his girlfriends and aunts.

Richard couldn’t be upset with him about the lies of politicians and aunts because the fictions Peter told him were the fictions he told everyone else. It wasn’t as though Peter would have told any other person a different story. There was also the fact that Peter, whose life was so shadowy and dangerous, had shared himself with Richard for the last five years despite everything that was against them. When they’d first started seeing each other, getting to know one another, Peter had said only his father and sister knew about him being queer. Now, he’d changed his story. Only George Smiley, and a woman named Delia, knew about him—but the way Peter said it made Richard believe that Peter had been slicing his words as close to the truth as he could years ago.

Mostly Richard was leaving it be, rather than get confused over how he should react. Was he to reward Peter for keeping him safe and being as honest as he was allowed to be? Was he to punish him for lying? He’d decided the best reaction was to act as though he didn’t need to do either. He decided to act as normal as possible. He asked Peter to put his clothes back on the hangars left in the closet they shared, while Richard put his filing back into the desk which was still in the second bedroom, and wrapped an arm around Peter’s waist when he felt like it whenever they passed by each other in the flat. Peter let himself be held and kissed exactly as he’d always done. He was as steady and predictable with Richard as sunrise and sunset.

Perhaps that was why their breakup had come out of such a left field.

Peter had been wringing his hands in that slight way of his when he needed something from Richard—it always started with twisting his fingertips together, the movement following eventually to the rest of each hand. His step had been light on the carpet, as hesitant as the smell of scotch and cigarettes which drifted in slower than he had. _I’ve not been enough,_ Richard had thought as he tried not to inhale too much of the rancid whiff of betrayal and cologne. The worries of years ago had filled his head as Peter tried to explain that no, nothing was going on, nothing at all—he just _needed_ Richard to go. He _wanted_ Richard to go. _I’m too old. Balding and boring, and he’s finally realized that try as I might I’m not enough_.

In the end he’d only wanted to know if there was someone else. Peter had never once, no matter what had happened over the years, come home twitchy from cigarettes, covered in the scent of another man, and drunk. Not all at the same time, at least. Everyone had bad days, but never _that_ bad.

“Peter, I believe that you owe me several months’ worth of Saturday evenings,” he said when the other man sat down in front of him, back resting against Richard’s knees. They were both tired from putting everything in their lives back in order and just needed something to help them relax. For Peter that apparently meant settling down on the floor within reach. There was a slight tension in the lines of his neck, though, as though he was scared of being told to leave. For his part, Richard knew that he would feel much better if he established a little more of his regular control, so he leaned forward just a little and slid his fingers into the golden hair before him. Peter’s hair was still soft against his palms and fingertips, though he felt it was a tad bit thinner than the last time he’d touched it. _Stress_. Peter groaned softly as Richard tugged and pulled on the strands. Soon his shoulders slumped out of the taut line they’d settled into as he let the teacher have his way.

“That means you make dinner when you get home,” Richard continued, still gently but firmly working Peter’s hair, “and all the way through, too, from the shops to the dishes back in the cupboard. And then you’ll put on a record and come sit with me, just like this, while I do my grading.” He smiled as Peter tried to nod. He slowly released Peter’s hair and bent forward to lay a kiss on the mussed locks. The blond hair at the moment was as messy but _right_ as their flat and their relationship. Several days ago Peter had quietly confessed that whole, awful Saturday—Mr. Smiley didn’t know how important Saturday evenings were for them, but he had an inkling which is what had started the whole thing. The man had a twisted sense of compassion, but it _was_ compassion Peter insisted.

Mr. Smiley could have continued to turn a blind eye towards Peter’s relationship with him—let Peter slip into complacency, which the blond man claimed was deadly in their trade. Except, he’d said, his voice barely above a whisper, it wouldn’t have been him who died—it might have been Richard, and he couldn’t bear the thought. Mr. Smiley had given him the perfect out—keeping his secrets and keeping his boyfriend alive—and he’d taken it. He acknowledged that it had been a brutal way to save Richard’s life, but he also admitted that when he was away from Richard he was a brutal kind of person.

Richard remembered that night differently, with far less forlorn heroics.

He’d woken up alone—Saturdays were Peter’s day to go in early to the office to organize files all day, so that he could come home at around four or so. Peter usually returned from the shops at about five or five thirty depending, and would set straight into making dinner. Every other day of the week, they made it together but Saturdays it was just Peter’s job. Sometimes the younger man would mess around and playfully test boundaries, trying to wheedle Richard into peeling vegetables or slicing bread, and those nights they would end up having an entirely different sort of dinner in their small kitchen before they actually had anything to eat.

That day Richard had made his usual show of going out to do his own laundry—because he was Peter’s _flatmate_ and they didn’t share _laundry_ of all things—for the gossipy neighbors. Dot the I’s and cross the T’s in the way he was expected to if he planned to continue living in this neighborhood without harassment. At four thirty he was done folding the laundry and putting it away, and he poured himself a spot of Peter’s scotch—and it _was_ Peter’s, Richard only had it on Saturday afternoons like this because he was entitled. He’d asked long ago if it were okay if he stole a shot or two once a week.

Peter was a little late leaving the office, Richard decided when five rolled around. And the shops were crowded because of the rare warmth of the day, which nicely explained Peter’s absence forty five minutes later. At six Richard put a kettle on to boil—must have taken that awful route he sometimes chose to avoid a particularly forward woman who wanted to do more with Peter than flirt, and the poor man would need tea to calm his rattled nerves.

At seven Richard made a small dinner of his own, trying to batten down the hatch on his worry. Perhaps Peter had gotten a call at work about his aunt, who had been severely ill the last few months—although sometimes it seemed like she was always in poorly health—and had had to rush away to see her. That notion sat well enough with him that he was able to eat dinner and then break out his grading. Four and a half hours went by like that, and while he was concerned he was not worried. He hoped that the horrid woman was either on the mend or that this evening would be the last in her long downhill slide—she always forced Peter to come visit her at the worst of hours and sometimes for a day or two even.

_Always says she’s about to bloody die and just bloody won’t_ , Peter had said bitterly in the middle of the night a year or two ago as he came home. He’d immediately stripped off every stitch of clothing on himself, throwing things without a care to where they landed. He had stalked right up to Richard before gracefully falling to his knees, giving himself over to Richard’s clever hands to help him forget. The quiet fury in his every move was what fascinated Richard even now—that Peter Guillam, who was sometimes a barely concealed spitting ball of rage, would submit to Richard’s every whim and _wanted to_ as well was something more than special. It was intoxicating and he always got a heady rush from it. Peter seemed to crave being in a place where he belonged to someone, that he didn’t even have to _think_ about belonging to them.

Right at midnight, when Richard was just a few pages away from being finished with his grading, the key had turned in the lock. He didn’t look up from his work, but he did smile just a little as he listened to Peter come in.

“Nearly done,” he said, understanding that you couldn’t help what your family did to you sometimes, and he’d even laughed shortly. “Sometimes I think they all share the same moronic brain.” That was Peter’s cue to blow up—in his way—about the aunt, Nancy, and they would have a bit of fun complaining before bed. Peter would make it up to him tomorrow, by calling in sick and spending the day with him.

But Peter didn’t say a word, didn’t even huff out a chuckle of his own—and it was as he turned to face his boyfriend that the first hint of someone else’s cologne hit Richard’s nose. The other man had taken a shaky breath in, and that was when Richard also caught the scent of cigarettes and scotch, and let it out slowly.

“I need…” _you to make me forget, you to give up your job and move to America with me, anything but what you’re about to say, Peter,_ “you to go.” The world had dropped out from under him, and he’d only barely been able to push himself up to stand. Peter was looking him right in the eye without being told, a rule he only very rarely broke.

“If we ever meant anything to you, please go. You said you would give me whatever I needed, anything I ever needed—and,” _please don’t keep saying this, Peter, please laugh and look at the floor and we’ll pretend you’re joking,_ “I need you to leave. Tonight, if possible.”

He had stared into Peter’s blue eyes for a solid twelve seconds, unable to even fathom what had just happened to him. Protesting would seem, in Peter’s eyes, to belie his promises and assurances of the last five years. Going would break his heart, but he had to do it. Peter wanted him to, and so he did.

Angela had been as sympathetic as a kick in the head, but at least she’d let him stay with her for a few days while he worked out a new flat situation. Despite her disgust with him, she still cared for him—perhaps he was the Aunt Nancy and she the Peter Guillam in their family—and had even loaned him her car the following day so he could get his things out of the flat. As he’d packed a few dishes and the like he’d only barely had time to notice that his orange juice was still sitting on the table where he’d left it yesterday.

Peter hadn’t been home, but the landlady had let him in and out—tutting all the while about poor lads having to be the ones to take care of their families at a moment’s notice, this is where all those women prattling on about equal rights could get off the bus, making their brothers and cousins nurse relatives who were doing poorly. That story had always been theirs to tell when one of them had to go away for a few days—usually Peter but sometimes Richard—after a fight or because of Peter’s aunt. His aunt named Nancy _Circus_.

Richard found he rather liked the idea of continuing to call Peter’s sometimes odd-houred departures “Going to see Aunt Nancy,” and was planning on continuing the tradition. He would have Peter continue to as well, he decided as he rubbed the tension out of the other man’s shoulders. Peter’s blond head was slumped completely forward, his upper body nearly boneless under Richard’s hands. He wished he’d had the forethought to have Peter take off his shirt, Richard dearly wanted to lay a few scratches down the other man’s shoulders with his nails. The redness of the lines and the warmth of the massaged skin would help him believe that this was real, that this man was his once again.

 “George was wondering today how you would feel about moving,” Peter’s voice was hazy and more husky than usual, “he doesn’t trust that our flat hasn’t been wired somehow, and the easiest way to nip that in the bud is to move. Otherwise I’ll have to tear out all the drywall. I know I’m not to leave dust about, but it won’t be helped if it comes to that.”

“This has been our home for the last four years, Peter.”

“But maybe our next will be the one for the next forty?” Peter’s words made his heart glow—though they’d been together for five nearly six years, Peter didn’t usually speak of them in the long term. Richard understood _why_ now, but previously had been a bit hesitant to ask hard questions like how long they were going to last—Peter had always deflected in some way ,before. “I hurt you here, and then I was alone in this place for months afterwards. We wouldn’t have to move today, when you’ve just gotten settled but—“

“Hush,” Richard said, reaching to put two fingers on the center of Peter’s collarbone briefly because laying a hand on his mouth from behind was out of the younger man’s comfort zone, “I was just pointing it out, not disagreeing. If you would feel safer moving, we’ll move.” There was so much more about Peter that he knew, now that he knew about his boyfriend’s real job. _Scalp hunter_ was what Peter had called it, and he hadn’t had to elaborate after that.

He was quite grateful to George Smiley, really, because not only did he have Peter back he now felt that he would properly _understand_ the other man. Richard now understood a little of why Peter disliked roleplay, and certain bonds—as well as why he liked other rules and requests.

“I would feel safer for you, yes. We—we can’t say anything about where we’ll move, though, because if there are microphones we don’t want the new address being picked up so easily.”

Richard hummed an acknowledgement, gently skimming both hands down Peter’s shoulders to his chest—slowly loosening the other man’s tie and unbuttoning the top few buttons on his shirt. He’d had to lean forward again to reach and his nose was buried in Peter’s hair, his lips at his ear.

“I think I can do that,” he murmured, biting down softly on the top of Peter’s ear, “though next time you want to give me an order like that, you must first be naked from the waist up—deal?” Richard’s hands slipped just into the newly opened shirt, teasing the nipples he found there. Peter groaned, lolling his head back onto Richard’s shoulder.

“Deal, deal—yes. Just like that, please just—“ 

  
Richard realized then just how much he'd missed the _sounds_ he could get out of Peter.


End file.
